


Easy is Not You and Me

by fictionalcandie



Series: Idol University [1]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bad Ideas, Closeted Character, Denial, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Pining, Scheming, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:05:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>A Story of Plaid and Glitter and Various Assumptions (true and otherwise)</em>
</p><p>Meet Kris Allen, freshman at Idol University, and out-and-proud gay man. And his roommate, fellow freshman Adam Lambert, who is… not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [duva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duva/gifts).



> Birthday fic, written for the prompt: Kradam college AU, with an openly gay Kris and and a firmly in-denial Adam as roommates.

Kris met Allison on his second day at Idol University. He’d already unpacked and arranged all of his stuff, his roommate hadn’t shown up yet, and he didn’t feel like grocery shopping right away, so he did the next most logical thing.

He found the nearest Chick-fil-A.

There were four other people in the building when Kris placed his order, and three of them worked there. “You guys look kind of dead,” he commented to the teenager with the violently red hair, who’d taken his order.

“It’s, like, Thursday, dude,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Thursdays are always like this. I hate Thursdays.”

Kris blinked. “Okay.”

She leaned over the counter, offering him her hand and an extremely wide smile. “I’m Allison.”

“I’m Kris,” he replied, taking her hand instinctively. Her smile got wider. He blushed nervously — he’d never been able to handle girls smiling like _that_ (it was his plaid shirt, they always seemed to take it the wrong way) — and quickly added, “And I’m gay. Uh. With a K.”

“Dude. Gay with a K?” Allison’s eyebrows rose. It looked like she wanted to laugh at him but was too nice to actually do it. “How does that work?”

“No. Um, gay with a G. Kris with a K.”

“Right.”

While Kris smiled sheepishly, Allison took her hand back and leaned her forearms on the counter. “So, do you spell for everyone you meet, or, like, just the people who give you chicken?”

Kris ended up listening to her talk the whole time he ate his food, because she took her break in order to sit at his table and ‘be entertained’, and, well, somehow her number ended up in his phone because “You should have friends here, dude.”

“I really like Chick-fil-A,” Kris replied, because he honestly had no idea what to say to something like that; he already _had_ friends. Just, well, most of them weren’t attending Idol University.

“And I like money,” Allison retorted, beaming.

Kris smiled back. There wasn’t really anything else to do.

Besides, when Allison had entered her number in the phone, she’d put her name as _Queen of Evrythng (+ Chkn)_.

Who was Kris to argue with that?

—

Kris had been at Idol for five days before his roommate showed up. Not that Kris had been keeping track, or looking for him, or anything, but. Well. Kris did better when he had _people_. (So what if he’d called Allison four times already? One of those wasn’t even his fault, she’d texted him asking “ _Skulz or GLTTR?!!_ ” and he’d really, really had to know what that was about before he gave his opinion.

He didn’t find out, but he didn’t have to say anyway, because she’d already settled on both and just wanted to talk. He didn’t mind. Sue him, okay, he didn’t care — Allison was awesome.)

Then it was Sunday.

 _He_ arrived.

The first thing Kris’s roommate ever said to him was “Oh my _God_ , you’re _adorable_.”

Kris, standing on a box, on his tiptoes, and _still_ having trouble reaching the ceiling to kill the _huge_ spider over his bed, spun around to see the speaker and — of _course_ — fell off the box. The first time he ever actually got a good look at his roommate, he was flat on his back on the floor, his face bright red.

“Let me get that,” his (tall, dark-haired, hot) roommate said helpfully, dropping all three of the bags he was carrying and picking up the tissue Kris had been going to use as an implement of spider-death. His (long, slender, hot) legs stepped right _over_ Kris and onto the box, and while Kris was busy staring at his (hot, hot, hot) ass, he killed the spider.

He hopped down, tossed the tissue in the waste basket, and leaned over and offered Kris his hand and a _blinding_ smile. “I’m Adam. You must be Kris!”

“Guh,” said Kris.

And that was how he met Adam Lambert.

—

Adam, Kris soon discovered, was incredibly nice, and insanely friendly. Also, he talked, a lot.

“You have a guitar!” he exclaimed, delighted, once he’d finished unpacking his things and had gone on to survey Kris’s half of the room. “That’s so cute. Do you play? Obviously you play. I mean, do you play _and_ sing?”

Kris, sitting on his bed and doing his best not to look like he was staring intently at his roommate, nodded. “Um, a little,” he added quickly, his voice coming out odd through his too-tight throat.

Holy cow, Adam’s smile was brilliant. And _attractive_.

That was another thing: Adam was _hot_.

The picture Kris had been sent over the summer, along with the information on his future roommate, had shown a freckled redhead with slightly chubby cheeks and slightly pimply skin. The man standing in front of Kris had black hair, and he was wearing make-up. Eyeliner and color on his eyelids and… stuff… on the rest of his face. The smile was the only thing that was the same. Even the eyes were different — the ones looking at him in real life were wider, bluer, more intense — but that, at least, Kris felt he could blame on the difference between pictures and flesh-and-blood people.

And the eye stuff. The eye stuff probably helped.

“Cool,” Adam said happily. “That must mean you like music, right?”

“Yes?” Kris agreed.

Adam smiled some more. “You’ll have to play for me sometime.”

“Okay,” Kris heard himself agree shyly. He bit his lip, and a moment later, inquired, “Do you? Play?”

Adam laughed. “Oh, no. I tried to learn a couple of times, but, just, _no_. I’ve been told I should just stick with my voice.”

“Okay.” Kris said again.

“My voice is good, though,” said Adam, almost reassuringly, like Kris might have started to feel sorry for him. “To be honest, it doesn’t really _need_ accompaniment, but more is always good, right, baby?”

“More is good, yeah,” Kris agreed.

More of _Adam_ , he couldn’t help thinking, would be really, _really_ good.

—

Kris and Adam clicked, almost immediately. Kris had never met anyone who he was so instantly comfortable with.

He’d never met anyone like Adam, at all.

Kris didn’t share any classes with Adam. They both had Monday and Thursday afternoons free, though, and Adam seemed to think that there was no better use of that time than hanging out with his roommate.

Kris wasn’t going to disagree with _that_. Especially given that it usually involved Starbucks, and either chicken or sushi or, when they were feeling reckless, _both_.

They watched movies together on their laptops twice a week, even if they’d both seen them many times already. They went shopping together, because Adam liked to shop and Kris liked to be around Adam. They found parties to go to, and clubs that let in under-21s, and went out together.

The best, though, was staying in together, when Adam would make Kris play his guitar and sing.

Adam just… _got_ him.

—

Kris had applied to Idol with the thought that he’d maybe get a business degree or something useful — it’s what his ex-girlfriend, Katy, had told him he ought to do, back when they were still together and Kris was still trying to convince himself that he was straight — but he’d decided within a week that business was absolutely not for him and changed his major to music theory. Adam, on the other hand, had known exactly what he wanted to do from the minute he arrived on campus, or possibly before, given that he’d shown up saying that he was majoring in musical theatre. The first thing he’d done had been to join Idol’s drama program, or whatever it was — or rather, as Kris suspected from the way Adam talked, taken it over.

(Kris had noticed that while Adam might sometimes talk big, he didn’t really _boast_. It was really cool of him, and also a little terrifying, because Kris didn’t think anyone could possibly be the level of awesome that the person Adam unconsciously painted himself as was, but Adam really seemed to be.)

Adam wasn’t the only cool person Kris met. Obviously, there had been Allison, but there were others too. People from his classes (Anoop-the-TA and Matt and Megan who seemed to spend all their time together, and Andrew who played guitar and didn’t pay any more actual attention to the professors than Kris did), a few of Allison’s Chick-fil-A people (like the Davids, Cook who was the manager and Archie who went to school with Alli and worked at Kris’s favorite Starbucks), and the guys he’d met because he liked to hang out in music stores and stare at the guitars (though, he seriously doubted that one guy’s name was actually Latin Jesus). There were a lot of people, actually.

Adam was just the _best_.

—

Kris decided, pretty much straight off, that he needed to introduce Adam and Allison. She didn’t work any of the afternoons that they stopped at Chick-fil-A, mostly because her school year had just started at the local high school, so it was almost a month before Kris got the two of them in the same room.

It was an awesome month, though, full of Kris following Adam around and vice versa. (Usually, this involved Adam’s arm across Kris’s shoulders and Kris’s arm around Adam’s back — and Kris was never, ever going to complain about anything that meant he was touching Adam. He had, seriously, lucked out as far as roommates went.)

When Kris finally did get to introduce his two best Idol friends, it was a Saturday, and they were, appropriately enough, at the mall — because Adam needed a new eyeliner pencil or something, even though to Kris it looked like he already had six that were exactly the same as the one they’d bought — and it wasn’t planned, at all.

Allison kind of ambushed them, actually.

“Dude, Kris!”

He heard the voice approximately half a second before the redhead collided with his side, arms wrapping tight around him.

“Who’s this?” asked Adam, his lips twitching with amusement as Kris struggled to get his arms free enough to hug Allison back.

“This is Allison,” Kris explained, giving up and just letting himself be squeezed. “She lives around here.”

“You look… friendly,” Adam teased, arching in eyebrow at Kris, rather significantly.

Kris was trying to figure out how to interpret that, when Allison let Kris go to round on Adam, faking a stern look which… didn’t really work for her. “I’m his self-appointed hag, thank you very much,” she declared, hands on her hips. “Who are you? Are you Adam? You must be Adam. You look like you’d be his Adam.”

“I am, in fact, Adam,” he replied, looking even more amused, with something in his shoulders relaxing. “Did I get famous without looking?”

Allison waved both hands to dismiss the question. “Kris has told me aaaall about you. He didn’t mention what you _look_ like, though — man, you’re awesome. I _love_ your hair!”

Adam’s smile got that impossible bit wider (Kris could watch it do that all day). “Thank you! Yours is pretty fierce, too,” he offered.

“Yeah? You think so?” Allison bounced on the balls of her feet. “I have to dye it, like, every two weeks, but it is _so_ worth it. Nobody ever loses me in a crowd!”

It was a good thing that Kris liked watching both of them talk, because between the two of them, he barely got a word in edgewise over the next twenty minutes.

Allison was curled into his side the whole time, and more importantly Adam basically draped himself all over Kris’s back and shoulder, so Kris was pretty okay with it.

—

“So, Allison’s, like, your best girl, huh?” teased Adam, on their way back to the dorm after saying goodbye to Allison outside the mall and catching the bus closer to campus. He leaned over to knock their shoulders together as they walked.

Kris blushed and kicked at the ground with the toe of his sneaker. “Yeah, I guess. She kind of adopted me.”

Adam grinned. “So, she lives around here?”

“Yeah, I think. I mean, she’s a senior in high school, so—” Kris broke off, shrugging sheepishly. “She works at Chick-fil-A, man. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Wow, your chicken fix _and_ a friend who isn’t in Arkansas,” said Adam, totally deadpan for about a second before he cracked up.

“Shut up, man,” Kris whined. He aimed an elbow at Adam’s ribs, but that just made him laugh harder. “You’re my friend, too.”

Adam didn’t stop laughing, and he didn’t say anything else, but his arm settled, warm and solid, around Kris’s shoulders, curling even closer to Kris’s neck than usual. Adam kept it there for the rest of the walk back to their room.

—

Three weeks later, coming back from picking up the takeout Adam had ordered for them, Kris found Adam in bed — wrapped around, and giggling with, a girl. It looked kind of, well. Compromising.

And okay, so Kris and Adam had skipped the whole “I’m out and proud!” conversation. Kris had kind of felt they hadn’t needed it, especially after Allison’s unique introduction and Adam’s reaction, or rather his really telling lack of reaction, and besides, it turned out that Kris really really failed at hiding his meager porn collection. (He may not have bought it — that was all Charles and Cale and Daniel and their _excellent_ sense of humor — but he _had_ kept it, and it was all guy-on-guy.) Kris’d thought it was pretty obvious for which team they played.

But, still.

Kris hesitated in the doorway.

A second later, Adam looked up, his face breaking into a huge, happy grin. The girl cuddled up next to his side on the bed looked up, too. It could have been Kris’s imagination, but he thought she raised her eyebrows at the look on Adam’s face before she turned to smile at Kris, too.

“Hi?” offered Kris. He would have waved (feebly), but his arms were full of cartons from his and Adam’s favorite Pad Thai place.

“Hey,” Adam replied brightly. “I was hoping you’d be back soon. I want you to meet someone. And I’m hungry.”

“I like meeting people,” Kris replied calmly, walking the rest of the way into the room. He dropped the food on his desk, then took off his messenger bag and dropped it next to his bed. Then, tugging on the hem of his t-shirt and offering that feeble wave after all, he half-smiled politely at the girl still tucked against Adam.

“Kris, this is my girl Danielle,” Adam declared, wrapping his arm tighter around the girl to give her an affectionate squeeze. He smiled even wider at Kris. “Remember, I talked about her? She’s my best friend.”

Oh.

Yeah, he remembered. And he felt a little silly.

Kris’s smile widened automatically. “Cool. Pleased to meet you, Danielle. I’m Kris.”

“He’s my roommate, Dani,” added Adam, at the same time Danielle rolled her eyes and said, “I _know_.”

Relaxing the rest of the way, Kris laughed a little, and flopped down on the part of Adam’s bed not already occupied. “So, did you really offer to break up with your boyfriend so you could go home and be Adam’s prom date?”

“ _Please_ ,” scoffed Danielle, grinning, one hand reaching over to poke at ribs that Kris already knew were one of Adam’s ticklish spots (that he never admitted to having). “I only went on, like, a dozen dates with the guy. Can’t trump my boy Adam and our true, epic love.”

“Oh my god, Dani, I so hate you,” groused Adam, but he was beaming at them like he’d won something.

“Pretty sure everyone on this bed knows that’s a lie, man,” said Kris, grinning unsympathetically.

Adam pouted. “I hate you, too.”

“You _so_ don’t,” Danielle said emphatically, squirming her way upright. “Come on, Lambert, I was promised Thai and gay cowboys. Pay up.”

When she got up to liberate the food from Kris’s desk, he crawled up to take her spot next to Adam. “Are you pimping out my DVD collection without permission, now?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Jake Gyllenhaal, babe,” Adam said, grinning smugly. “I dare you to actually complain.”

Kris snuggled deeper into the warmth of Adam’s side and smiled. He so, so wasn’t about to complain.

—

Kris didn’t think he’d ever been happier. Sure, he pretty much hated attending _all_ of his classes and college in general seemed to pretty much suck ass, but he’d made friends who didn’t have to “get over” the fact he’d “suddenly turned _gay_ , dude” and who didn’t think it was weird that he now wore tighter jeans than their girlfriends.

Plus, he had Adam.

Adam was pretty much the coolest thing in the history of ever, as far as Kris was concerned. And before Kris went home for the holidays, he was totally going to ask Adam out. Or maybe just kiss him.

His mama already thought Adam was his boyfriend, anyway.

—

Just when Kris felt like he’d finally, almost, worked up the nerve to say something to Adam about having a huge, massive crush on him, Kris got back to the dorm one afternoon and his happy bubble got punctured.

Punctured by a sledgehammer, that was.

Adam was on his bed with a girl again — only this time he was stretched out _on top_ of her, his _mouth_ on her _neck_ and his hand hitching her leg up higher around his hips, which were grinding down against her in a _really_ unmistakable way. The girl had her eyes closed and was moaning softly. They were both more or less fully clothed — Adam had his shirt off, and the girl’s shoes were on the floor by the bed — but they didn’t need to be naked for Kris to tell what was going on.

“Oh,” he stammered, flustered, before his brain could switch on and tell him that announcing his presence was a much less appealing option than just backing silently out of the room and fleeing.

The couple on the bed stilled. After a second, Adam glanced over his shoulder at the door.

“Oh. Kris,” he said flatly, and pulled himself upright. “Uh. Hi.”

The girl wiggled herself into a seated position as well, tugging at her clothes and offering Kris a sheepish smile. “Hi,” she said, while trying to straighten her hair. “You must be Adam’s roommate.”

“I am,” he said slowly, face flaming.

“Kris, right?” She smiled. Her eyes tracked up and down him once, taking him in almost pointedly. “I’ve heard so much about you from Adam.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Kris replied, blinking. “You are…?”

“Oh! Alisan. Adam’s girlfriend.”

Kris felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop a little, and his blush fade in a cold rush. “You— I— He has a _girlfriend_?”

“Yeah,” she said easily, like she got that reaction a lot.

Kris stared. “I. Oh.”

There was a flash of something on Adam’s face, relief and satisfaction and something else — and Kris realized, with a sharp horrified thump in his chest, that Adam had _known_ Kris would find them here. He’d done this _intentionally_. There could be no reason for that, unless… unless Adam (this Adam, who had a _girlfriend_ and was apparently _straight_ and made out with not-Kris people in their freaking _dorm_ ) also knew about Kris’s big gay feelings for him.

And, obviously, didn’t return them.

It was, as letdowns went, not the worst. It wasn’t pleasant, of course, walking in on Adam, like that, with someone else, much less a girl — but it was better than if Kris had actually said something, had actually made a move on Adam, and Adam’d had to turn him down point-blank, to his face. That would have been too humiliating to stand.

Adam, being Adam, had clearly chosen to shut Kris down, before it could get to that point. It was still a rejection, though, and Kris still burned with hot, shamed embarrassment.

Alisan smiled brightly. “I’m really glad to finally meet you,” she said.

Kris swallowed. “Yeah.”

—

Kris didn’t know what to do with himself after Alisan had left. He ended up standing and fidgeting lamely until Adam broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Does it bother you?” Adam asked, his lips pursed and his cheeks slightly hollowed. “That I brought her here?”

“I thought you were _gay_ ,” Kris blurted, and instantly wanted to take the words back. Or maybe sink through the floor.

Adam’s face closed off and the line of his back stiffened. “Well, you shouldn’t have.”

Kris cringed. “Obviously. I— Look, man, I’m sorry, I just—”

“You assumed because I wear makeup and like to dress up that I wouldn’t be able to get it up for a girl,” interrupted Adam, his lip twitching up, for a second, into a sneer. “Lots of people do.”

“It was wrong, man, I _know_ that.” Kris blew out a deep, frustrated breath. “Look, seriously, I’m sorry. It was hypocritical of me and I— Just, I’m sorry, Adam.”

“Forget it. It’s fine,” said Adam, in a tone which practically yelled that it wasn’t. “I’m going out.”

It was three in the afternoon.

“Adam—”

“Don’t wait up!” Adam called over his shoulder.

As the door slammed closed behind him, Kris grimaced and flopped face-first onto his bed.

 _That_ wasn’t a disaster, or anything.

—

A couple of hours later, Kris’s escape into the trippy world of _Donnie Darko_ had completely failed to hold his attention (Kris only _wished_ his problems were as awesome as killer rabbits and wormholes), and he’d been reduced to staring at his phone, hoping Charles would text him to complain about aliens again. Or something.

It was pretty pathetic.

He finally convinced himself that he needed to leave the dorm, and ended up at Chick-fil-A, where he ordered on autopilot and took his food back to the table he usually used.

He sat there staring at it without taking a single bite.

A few minutes later, someone called his name loudly, and Allison dropped into the seat across from him, smiling widely. She was wearing a sparkly t-shirt proclaiming her _Princess Badass_ , but her uniform shirt was in her hand, which meant her shift had just ended. “How’s it go—”

“He has a girlfriend,” Kris blurted.

“—ing.” Allison blinked and stared at him. “Wha? Who are we talking about?”

Kris winced. “Adam.”

Her eyes widened. “No _way_! Seriously? _Adam_ has a girlfriend? Like, a _dating_ girlfriend?”

“Like an actual, have-sex-on-Adam’s-dorm-bed, girlfriend,” Kris agreed tonelessly. He picked up a waffle fry, stared at it, and set it back down.

Allison gaped at him. “Oh, my _god_.”

“I know,” said Kris, looking mournfully at his food.

“That’s— just… Wow.”

“I _know_ ,” said Kris.

—

A week later, Cale swung by Idol to drive Kris home. Adam wasn’t leaving for another few days, but Kris hadn’t anticipated having to deal with the two of them meeting, because ever since Kris’s _introduction_ to Alisan, Adam seemed to be able to find any number of excuses to not be in their room. Or anywhere else that Kris was.

Adam had the curiosity of an entire _litter_ of kittens, though, and he’d already known that Cale was coming, and when.

So, _naturally_ , he was the first person Cale saw.

And, because when Kris’s luck was bad it was _terrible_ , Adam was about to leave the dorm, wearing one of the ridiculous, over the top things that were apparently somehow required by his position as Head Drama Bitch in Charge.

That meant kohl, and jewel-toned eyeshadow, and about a metric ton more glitter than normally worn by the average teenage male. (And the pleather trousers. Did Kris mention the pleather trousers? Because there were pleather trousers.)

They did the whole “Hi, nice to meet you,” thing, then Adam said, “Sorry, but I’m kind of running late, would you mind if I…?”

Kris quickly assured him that it was fine, he could totally just leave. Hopefully quickly. And sometime before Cale got over staring at the feathers attached to the sleeves of Adam’s jacket and remembered he could talk.

Adam smiled, and Adam waved, and a second later Adam was on his way out the door — right when Cale got his voice back.

“… dude,” Cale said, shaking his head and grinning at the look on Kris’s face, “Your roommate’s as gay as you are.”

“Uh,” Kris started, uncomfortable, just as Adam’s head popped back around the door and he glared at Cale.

“I am not _gay_.”

“He’s not gay,” Kris echoed resignedly. He covered half his face with one hand and didn’t look at either of them as he recited, “He’s got a girlfriend. I’ve met her. Her name is Alisan. She’s very nice.”

Cale looked totally unconvinced. “He _seems_ really gay…”

“Yes, well, I’m _not_ ,” snapped Adam. He arched one eyebrow. “Please stop assuming things about me, Kris’s-friend-whose-name-I-don’t-remember.”

“Okay, okay! Sorry, man,” Cale muttered hurriedly, raising his arms in apology. “You’re not gay.”

“Thank you. Kris, babe, I’ll see you after the break.” One lingering, suspicious look later, Adam was finally actually gone.

Kris breathed a sigh of relief.

“Seriously, dude,” muttered Cale, shaking his head. “Is that guy in denial, or what? Because he was protesting, like, _way_ too much.”

Kris groaned. “Just… shut up and drive me home, Cale.”

Cale did.


	2. Chapter 2

Kris came back from winter break kind of hoping that it would turn out he’d just hallucinated everything about Adam dating a woman.

Kris had never been prone to hallucinations, though, and it turned out that he really, really hadn’t.

—

The problem with Adam being his _straight_ roommate was that Kris couldn’t seem to come up with a good reason not to hang out with him — ‘He’s _straight_!’ just made inner-Kris roll his eyes — and, well. Adam was still _awesome_.

He was the kind of awesome that had Kris sitting up and giggling helplessly at three in the morning (even though Kris had a _class_ in, like, five hours), just because Adam had coffee too late and it made him bouncy and cheerful and Kris couldn’t look away from a bouncy, cheerful Adam if his life depended on it, and bouncy, cheerful Adam had even less of a filter than normal Adam. It made inner-Kris blush like a twelve-year-old girl.

Kris was kind of dreading what a drunk Adam was going do to inner-Kris. Because, unless Adam turned out to be the mean kind of drunk, he was pretty sure that a drunk Adam would be even more irresistibly unfiltered than bouncy, cheerful Adam, and Kris just did _not_ need to be finding Adam more attractive.

When it came down to it, Kris had simply spent way too much time thinking of Adam as his gay-and-possibly-interested roommate. He couldn’t just turn off the part of him that was slowly falling harder and harder for Adam.

It sucked.

Badly.

—

Danielle came to visit, unexpectedly, one weekend in February. “Hi, Kris,” she greeted him when she entered the dorm, smiling cheerfully for the two seconds it took her to register the morose look on Kris’s face. “Oh, sweetie! What’s wrong?”

How did someone tell a person that they were moping because they’d thought the person’s best friend was flaming and possibly in love with them and that the person was their best friend’s fag hag and wanted them to date — especially when it turned out that the best friend in question was straight after all and, oh, hey, _not even single_?

There probably wasn’t a nice way to do that.

Kris shrugged, instead.

Danielle eyed him with a sort of worried look on her face. It was a lot like the one Allison had given him the day before. “Well,” she said, after a moment, “where’s my boy? I’ll go get him, and then I’m sure we can fix whatever it is.”

Kris would really have preferred not to let her know what was making him act like a teenage girl, but if he answered the question it was going to be _obvious_ , and it was really rude not to answer people. He slouched a little more.

“He had a date,” he eventually said, not looking at Danielle. He felt pathetic enough as it was without seeing the expression on her face. “With his Alisan.”

“What? Allison? Your little redhead at the chicken place?” Danielle sounded confused.

“No, _Alisan_.” Kris frowned — Adam probably would have called it pouting — at his knees. “You know, his girlfriend? The girl he’s dating? That Alisan.”

A second later, Danielle started laughing.

“Oh,” she gasped, sounding like she thought Kris was _hilarious_ , “oh, _man_ , that is the _funniest_ thing you have _ever_ said, oh my _god_. His _girlfriend_! Oh, _shit_ , Kris, you actually had me going for a second there.”

Kris jerked his head up, startled.

Her cheeks pink and a huge smile on her face, Danielle was still giggling. “ _Girl_ friend, god, that was _priceless_.”

“Um,” said Kris, unable to stop himself from staring at her. “I… didn’t know. That you didn’t. Know, I mean. Uh. Sorry?”

In the process of wiping tears of laughter from her cheeks, Danielle slowly stilled. “You… actually think he’s got a girlfriend.”

It wasn’t really a question.

Kris answered it anyway.

“I caught them on his bed just before break. It was kind of… hard to misconstrue.”

Her eyes went really, really wide. “Whoa. I mean, just, _whoa_ ,” she breathed. “Adam _actually_ …”

Kris lowered his head again.

Danielle dropped heavily down onto the bed next to him. “Holy _fuck_. That’s just… really?” She sounded totally shell-shocked.

Kris seconded that feeling.

—

“Adam,” Danielle said decisively sometime later — while on Kris’s laptop screen there were a bunch of characters fretting about insanity (or possibly mathematics) while Gywneth Paltrow looked pretty — “Is not straight.”

“Yeah,” said Kris, morose. “He just has sex with girls.”

Danielle scoffed. “ _I_ could have sex with girls.”

“Great. Awesome. Please don’t tell me about it if you do.”

Ignoring Kris’s wince, she went on, “It wouldn’t make me gay.”

“… uh.”

“Shut up.” She rolled over, so she could look at him rather than the movie, and tilted her head thoughtfully. “D’you have her number? Alli’s, I mean.”

“Whose, my Alli or his Ali?” asked Kris. He pulled out his phone without bothering to take his eyes away from the computer.

“Both,” Danielle decided, after a moment.

“Look under Q for my Alli’s number, you should know it when you see it.” Kris passed her the phone. “Alisan’s should be right near the top. Adam gave it to me before he went out tonight, just in case.”

“Oh my God, that _boy_ ,” said Danielle, groaning. “He’s fucking _hopeless_. A hopeless _moron_.”

Kris blinked. “What?” he asked, his attention temporarily caught.

She waved him away. “Watch your movie, I’m plotting.”  
 

—

Danielle’s plotting apparently required that she and Kris meet Alisan for lunch the next day. Lunch where no food was actually ordered or eaten, because it really just involved confronting Alisan. (“Interrogating,” Danielle called it. She had a crazy look in her eye when she did that, though, so Kris politely ignored it.)

Kris thought it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Not that it did him any good.

“You know I have nothing against you,” Danielle began by saying, looking at Alisan seriously. “I think you’re awesome, I really do, but—”

“You’re about to tell me that Adam’s gay, aren’t you?” Alisan interrupted tiredly. She did not look at all surprised.

Danielle and Kris shared a quick glance. “Yeah,” he said, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck. “We are.”

Alisan gave Kris a slow, thoughtful once-over, like she hadn’t done exactly the same thing the first time Adam had introduced them. “Do you have proof yet?”

“P-proof?” Kris blinked and frowned. “I— Um, no.”

“I didn’t think so.” Alisan smiled at him, not unkindly, and stood, reaching over to gently touch the back of his forearm, like she just couldn’t help herself (he was probably doing that kicked puppy thing Daniel was always complaining about). “I _do_ have proof that he’s straight, however, or at least straight enough to date me. Until you have something that says otherwise? I’ll trust my judgment.”

“Okay,” Kris said quickly, when it looked like Danielle was going to say something which was definitely, totally not agreement. “That’s fine. You can definitely do that.”

Danielle watched her walk away before rounding on Kris and frowning fiercely. “Adam _is not straight_ ,” she said again.

Kris patted her shoulder and really, really wished that he could go back to believing that, too.

—

For the record, Kris didn’t _do_ parties. They were one of the things his friends had tried to use when they were selling him on the idea of college during senior year (okay, so he _might_ have been telling people that he wanted to be a cab driver), but it really hadn’t worked, because parties? Not his thing. He did not do them, he really didn’t.

He especially didn’t do frat parties.

He _did_ kind of have trouble saying no to people, though, which was probably why he’d ended up wandering around a frat house (did AnoopMattMegan know these people, was that why Kris was here…?) with a plastic cup half full of something that smelled like pineapple punch and tasted like liquid rainbows (after the first three times he said “uh, beer, I guess?” people had just stopped asking what he wanted to drink), trying to pretend that he was comfortable being surrounded by half- and mostly-naked and -drunk people he didn’t know.

It would probably have been more fun with Adam there, but Adam had turned the invitation down because he had “a thing, a very important last minute thing with, uh, people” that he couldn’t miss. (His words. Kris totally didn’t talk like that.)

At least there wasn’t anyone he knew around, to make fun of him.

“Hel _lo_ there, darlin’,” purred a delighted voice. An arm curled around Kris’s waist, and a face nuzzled his shoulder. “What’s your name?”

Kris coughed. “Um…”

“Who might Um be, when he’s at home?” the petite brunette curling himself around Kris teased, and continued to treat Kris like his personal cuddle toy. “I’m Brad. And you are _very_ delicious.”

“I’m Kris,” he mumbled back. He went to offer Brad his hand, belatedly remembering the drink he’d been holding — but the cup seemed to have disappeared somehow and anyway, Brad seemed already to have possession of his hand. (He tucked it, apparently happily, into his own back pocket.) Kris blushed. “Er, with a K.”

“Well, Kris Er, I think we should make out.”

“Um,” said Kris again, staring at Brad’s shiny full lips and deliberately _not_ panicking. The beer and pot helped. “You think— Okay?”

Somehow, he ended up on a sofa, a few minutes later, with Brad’s tongue in his mouth, then Brad’s bottom lip caught between his teeth, then Brad’s mouth on his jaw. It was kind of nice, really. Kris hadn’t kissed anyone since he’d left for college — to be honest, since then, he’d been too busy falling for Adam to even think about being interested in kissing anyone else — and he’d really missed it. Kris _liked_ kissing. He liked sex (well, mostly in theory). He liked — Hey.

“Oh, oh, hey,” blurted Kris, leaning away from Brad’s pretty, talented mouth. He met the questioning, heavily lined eyes of the boy straddling his lap, and grinned. “Wanna get out of here? My roommate is— My room’s supposed to be, uh, empty. We could— Wanna?”

Brad pursed his lips and creased his delicate little face up in thought for about half a second. Then he grinned widely. “Oh, I ‘wanna’,” he agreed, sliding off Kris’s lap and grabbing his hands to pull him to his feet. “Point us in the right direction, precious.”

—

It was perfectly true that Kris’s room was supposed to be empty, for at least part of the night, but Adam _had_ said that there was a chance he’d be back before the next morning. Which meant there was a very good possibility that he would walk in on whatever Kris and Brad got up to.

Kris felt, a little bitterly, that if it happened, Adam deserved it.

Kissing Brad while on his own bed was even nicer than kissing Brad on same random couch at a party he hadn’t even wanted to attend in the first place. Brad seemed to think so too, or maybe he was just taking advantage of an opportunity, but their shirts didn’t last very long after they got back to Kris’s room.

Not that Kris had any kind of problem with that, because he really, really didn’t.

Kissing shirtless was totally better than fully-clothed kissing.

Kris should probably have thought his brilliant idea through a little more, though, because when Adam _did_ — of _course_ — return, it was right as Kris was starting to _really_ enjoy himself, and just as Brad was working his hand into Kris’s jeans.

Adam was already talking as he opened the door. “Oh my god, Kris, you will not believe what I—” The light switched on, and Adam sucked in an impressively deep startled breath. “ _Oh_ my god, _Kris_?”

It took Kris a moment to react. Mostly because Brad didn’t seem to care that they’d been walked in on; he’d wrapped his fingers around Kris’s still-very-interested cock and was pumping steadily. Kris leaned back from the kiss, but just as he was about to pull completely away, Brad adjusted his grip and swiped his thumb over Kris’s cockhead.

“Ungh,” he said intelligently, dropping his forehead to Brad’s shoulder so Adam couldn’t see the deep red spreading over his cheeks.

“Roommate?” Brad inquired, with what sounded like a smirk, though Kris didn’t bother looking. Then, sounding almost hopeful, “Ooh, or _boyfriend_?”

Kris made a sound that he couldn’t decide whether to call a groan or a whimper, and his hips stuttered, pushing his erection more firmly into Brad’s hand.

“ _Kristopher_ ,” Adam said again, more forcefully.

“Roommate,” Kris told Brad, around a gasp. “St– _straight_ roommate.”

Brad sighed. “Pity,” he muttered. His hand didn’t stop moving.

“Still in the room here, boys,” said Adam. He did not sound pleased.

“No chance he’ll go away, is there?” Brad asked, his lips brushing the shell of Kris’s ear. He added a little lick at the end of the sentence, too.

“ _No_ ,” Adam answered for him.

The next second, his hand was on Kris’s shoulder, yanking him off the bed. Adam looked really, really annoyed.

Kris hastily fumbled himself back into his jeans, while Brad propped himself on his elbows and frowned at Adam. “That’s not very nice,” he said, not even trying not to hide the tent in his own pants.

“Yeah, well, I need Kris, so you’re gonna have to go,” Adam declared, looking all haughty.

Kris shivered. Just a little.

Brad pouted.

Adam shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, and didn’t look it.

—

Adam _didn’t_ actually need Kris. When asked what was so important, he’d gone on some sort of long verbal ramble involving roofs, of all things, and also possibly pink elephants, and ending up somewhere in the territory of telling Kris that it was past his bedtime. Kris didn’t follow even half of it, because he was still pretty buzzed and Adam was doing the thing where he looked earnest and talked very quickly with his hands to distract you from the fact that he — most likely — had no idea what he meant. Or maybe that he was insulting you. Sometimes both.

“All right,” Kris said eventually, peering muzzily up Adam. “So, I’ll— Bed, then.”

“Yes,” said Adam enthusiastically. “Good.”

“You’re mean, though. I was _kissing_ , and stuff,” he couldn’t resist saying. He might have pouted a little, but he figured that if he did, he was allowed. Adam had totally cockblocked him, after all. “I _like_ kissing.”

Adam snorted. “Of course you do.”

Kris thought that what he’d _really_ like was to be kissing Adam. That wasn’t new, though. He always thought that. And Adam was probably a totally kiss slut on the inside, anyway.

“And your mom, too,” Kris muttered vaguely, and giggled.

Adam ignored him. “I’m going to sleep, now.”

“Kay,” said Kris. He kept his eyes open so he could watch Adam. Just for a bit. Until he got tired of it.

Adam was just climbing into his bed when, apparently unable to resist, he stopped, turned, and headed for Kris’s bed, instead.

“Uh,” Kris said intelligently, while Adam perched delicately on the edge of the mattress. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but your technique is terrible,” Adam informed him, not unkindly. “I couldn’t help noticing while you were making out with — what’s his name? — pretty dopple-Kris.”

“Brad,” Kris informed him reflexively. “His name is Brad. And I really don’t think—”

Adam talked over him, laying a gentle hand on Kris’s knee as he spoke. “ _And_ , I think it would be a total waste for two people with mouths as pretty as yours to be exchanging terrible kisses.”

“So you’re…” Kris frowned, confused. “Telling me not to kiss him anymore?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it,” protested Adam. Kris gave him an unimpressed look, because they both knew he _would_ ; Adam ignored it, and went on, “I’m offering to show you the _right_ way to do it.”

“… you’re going to give me a visual guide?”

Adam huffed and rolled his eyes. It distracted Kris, which was why he didn’t notice Adam’s hands cupping the sides of his face, at first.

“Uhm, what?” he blurted, a second later, when he _did_ notice.

“Hold still,” Adam instructed sternly, leaning closer. His right hand slid down to Kris’s throat. “And pay attention.”

Adam kissed him slowly, carefully, all tender and expert and totally confident. Kris had time to admit to himself, before Adam’s lips and tongue destroyed his higher brain function altogether, that kissing Adam was _totally_ more fun than kissing Brad had been.

Maybe that was because he actually _liked_ Adam and had been thinking about kissing him since before he went home for Christmas.

“See, you’re better already,” Adam whispered, his breath ghosting over Kris’s parted lips and into his mouth.

Kris might have whimpered. Just a little.

Smiling at him, though it looked a bit off, Adam released him. He turned and climbed into his own bed, rolling so his back was to Kris.

He didn’t move again, even though Kris watched until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

—

Adam didn’t mention kissing Kris.

Kris didn’t bring it up, either.

—

Three nights after Kris… met… Brad, Adam had a set at one of the clubs close to campus that he’d somehow talked _someone_ into letting him do. Adam had been bragging about it forever, and even if Kris had wanted to, there was no chance he would have been able to weasel out of it. Adam actually went so far as sending a few of his drama friends to _kidnap_ Kris.

Not that he was _planning_ to weasel out of it, or anything.

As it turned out, he probably should have tried harder.

See, Kris kind of really hated Adam sometimes — in that way where he didn’t hate Adam at all, but really wished that he _could_.

When Adam was onstage singing was one of those times, it turned out, because Adam onstage singing was just about the most abso-freaking-lutely unfair thing in the entire universe, right up there with Kris not getting to play Ennis del Mar in the Brokeback movie (not that he would really want to replace Heath, because Heath had done a _fantastic_ job, and anyway Kris was, like, the exact _opposite_ of an actor and had zero desire to be one, but Kris could dream). Kris hadn’t realized that Adam was quite _that_ unfair.

Oh, Kris had known that Adam could sing, of course he had. Adam talked like a singer, and when he had Kris play for him in their room he’d hum and sometimes sing along softly. So, yeah, obviously Kris knew that Adam could sing.

He just hadn’t known that Adam could _sing_.

He’d even known that Adam’s range was rather large. But there was a difference between knowing and seeing, especially when he factored in that “large” according to Adam apparently equaled “ridiculous” — because Adam was hitting notes Kris thought only came from girls. And opera singers. And eunuchs. And his stupidly talented, hot roommate.

Adam was up there behind that microphone producing absolutely the hottest sounds Kris had ever heard called singing. He was going back and forth between head and chest voice like it was nothing, holding notes for what felt like eons and then _going on singing_ like breathing was for other people, all ridiculously clear and powerful. Holy shit, Kris kind of wanted to hump Adam’s voice.

And then hump Adam.

Adam was doing all of this amazingly sexy singing while _moving_ — rocking his hips, twisting his shoulders, rolling his hips, spreading his legs and shaking his hips, strutting across the stage with slinky hips — good Goddam, Adam’s hips. Adam could move his hips like — Kris didn’t even know. A porn star? Something sexier than a porn star.

He apparently had a porn star worthy dick, though. Kris kept trying not to stare, but those hips wouldn’t seem to hold still, and Adam’s pants were really, really tight. Tight enough to make it obvious that Adam’s impressive cock was apparently enjoying Adam’s performance almost as much as Kris was.

Kris didn’t really need to see Adam’s dick _at least_ half hard, while Adam swiveled his hips forward like he was fucking the air right there in front of Kris and God and everyone, but he totally _was_ seeing it.

He was also seeing how Adam’s hand kept moving down and cupping that delicious bulge in those delicious trousers, palming himself almost as if he couldn’t help it.

He was obviously _enjoying_ himself.

Kris was, too. In fact, he was red-faced and panting as quietly as he could, clutching the mostly-full bottle that was his first beer with both hands, white knuckled. His own dick was hard in his jeans, no ‘half’ about it.

Actually, Kris was honestly pretty sure that if Adam straddled the mike stand — put that long shiny hard length between his thighs and pulled it up against his crotch and that fucking gorgeous bulge of hard cock — and jerked the thing off like he could _feel_ it, one more damn time, Kris was going to literally come in his pants.

And he was supposed to be _getting over_ Adam.

Yeah.

So not happening.

Damn it.

—

Kris was kind of (stupidly) in love with Adam. That was nothing new, but apparently he was also completely, totally in mad lust with Adam and could no longer ignore it, which was a lot harder to deal with. Kris didn’t know how he was supposed to get over a guy he was in love with, who was also pretty much turning into his best friend ever, and whose bones he was tempted to jump at least a dozen times a day.

He wanted Adam _so much_.

Kris was still a little mad at him, though, for that very nice, really mean, totally inappropriate ‘lesson’ of a kiss. He didn’t know what Adam could possibly have been thinking, because he _knew_ that Adam was too good a guy to play around with Kris like that on purpose.

“This is not a hard problem, dude!” Allison exclaimed, when Kris told her about his predicament, shaking her head. “Here, I’ll show you!” She held out her hand imperiously. Kris looked at it blankly. She wiggled her fingers impatiently and demanded, “ _Phone_ , Kris!”

“Okay,” he said slowly. He pulled out his phone and hesitantly passed it over.

She flipped it open immediately and… started scrolling through his contact list?

“Allison?”

“You _did_ say you got that pretty boy’s number, right?” she asked, off-handedly. “What was his name again?”

“Brad,” Kris replied automatically. He frowned. “Why—”

“Aha! Found it!” The phone was shoved back toward him, already ringing; there was a triumphant smile on Allison’s face. “Here!”

Kris stared. “What—”

“Take it! Talk to him,” urged Allison, shaking the still-ringing phone temptingly. “Get him down here, okay?”

Kris bit his lip. “Why?”

“Be _cause_ , I’ve got a _plan_ ,” she declared smugly.

Kris glanced between her face, the phone, and her _Benevolent Overlady of Awesome_ t-shirt… and took the phone.

“Hello? Brad?” Kris cleared his throat. “It’s— it’s Kris. Kris Er? Yes, with a K. Listen…”

—

It took the promise of coffee immediately, and a cheeseburger at a later date, but eventually Brad agreed to come down to Starbucks and meet them.

“Wow,” offered Allison, as Kris hung up. “I can’t decide if you’re a pushover, dude, or he’s just an extortionist.”

Kris winced. “Do me a favor and don’t try too hard, Alli.”

She grinned at him.

—

Allison’s plan, it turned out, was simple: Convince Brad to pretend to date Kris and at every available opportunity, rub him in Adam’s face.

Figuratively speaking. _Literally_ rubbing Brad in Adam’s face would probably have just resulted in people getting smacked.

“I just want you to know, hun, that your plan is kind of scary in its badness,” Brad pronounced, after a thoughtful moment of silence. “However, it’s nicely evil, and also, you are sneakily hot, so. I’m in.”

“Yay!” Allison exclaimed, flinging an arm around each of their necks. “This means you have a boyfriend, Kris!”

“A _fake_ boyfriend,” Kris pointed out.

“Because he’s got the hots for a straight boy,” Brad added, with a half-pitying, half-sympathetic pat to Kris’s cheek.

“Air quotes!” Allison let them go, bouncing on the balls of her feet and waving a stern finger at Brad. “You have to do the air quotes.”

Brad sighed. “The hots for a ‘straight boy.’ Better?”

“Much!”

Kris sighed. “You really think this’ll work?”

“No,” said Brad, at the same time Allison said, “Yes!”

“Don’t worry, though, Arkansas,” Brad added, slipping his arm around Kris’s waist and smiling coyly up through his lashes. “It’s definitely going to be _fun_.”

At least _someone_ would enjoy it.

—

“I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend,” Adam said, watching Kris from his vantage point sprawled across Kris’s bed. He had his arms crossed, hugging Kris’s pillow to his chest, and he looked grumpy.

Kris shrugged and finished doing up his favorite blue and red plaid shirt. “He _wasn’t_.”

Adam huffed. “Isn’t this all very sudden?” he demanded.

“It’s college,” replied Kris, the way Brad and Allison had told him to if it came up, because apparently neither of them trusted him to be able to dissemble properly on his own. “Have you seen my other shoe?”

“Under my dresser.” Adam pouted some more while Kris crouched to fish out the shoe. “But it’s _movie_ night, Kris.”

“Dude, I’m not going to stay out all night, or anything. I have class in the morning, man,” said Kris. He started to leave, then paused at the door.

“I’ll bring you back something to eat, okay?”

Adam made a vague noise of assent, still looking like someone was borrowing his favorite jacket without permission.

Kris left to go buy Brad the cheeseburger he’d promised.

—

Kris knew that Brad was a student, but wasn’t really sure what year Brad was, or what he was attending Idol for. It had something to do with singing, maybe — or clothes. At least, that was something like Brad’s excuse for the mesh pants he wore to one of Kris’s ‘practices’ with Andrew. It was a good thing the cold weather had forced him to wear a coat, or Kris was pretty sure his new fake-boyfriend would have given at least a dozen people heart attacks.

Introducing his guitar-buddy to his fake-boyfriend went pretty well — at least no-one commented on Kris actually _using_ the term ‘fake boyfriend’, which was a win as far as he was concerned.

“You’re like the tiny, prettier version of Kris,” said Andrew instead, looking Brad up and down.

“You’re cute,” said Brad, and took his coat off.

Andrew dropped his guitar.

“It’s a good thing you were sitting on your bed,” Kris muttered, reaching over to hand it back to him. “You could have broken that.”

Brad perched on the edge of Andrew’s desk, crossing his legs. “You are not the straight boy I’m supposed to help Kris introduce to the wonderful world of manlove.”

“No,” Andrew agreed, still staring.

“So, what am I doing here?” asked Brad.

Kris looked up from tuning his own guitar. “Allison says Adam covets my guitar mojo — hey, that’s the way _she_ said it — and thinks that if he finds out you were here watching us jam it’ll make him jealous. But she also thinks the reason he kissed me was because he was jealous of your pretty mouth, so, I mean, whatever, man.”

The foot Brad had been swinging froze. “Straight boy _kissed you_?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Kris shrugged. “But it he did it because we had, like, bad technique, or something, and our pretty mouths were being wasted. Or something.”

“You didn’t tell me that!” exclaimed Brad. He gave Kris a stern look, while Andrew started sniggering.

Kris blinked at them. “I didn’t think it mattered?”

Brad shook his head. “Listen, Arkansas. Straight boys do not go around kissing male friends because their pretty mouths—” Brad paused, arching a brow questioningly. “His words?”

“Yeah,” replied Kris, doing his best not to sound confused.

“— because their pretty mouths are being wasted on terrible kissing.” Brad put his hands on his hips. “Do you know why?”

“I do,” interjected Andrew, grinning, when Kris just shook his head. “Because a straight boy wouldn’t care.”

“And he wouldn’t call your mouth pretty,” agreed Brad.

“So… it’s relevant?” Kris asked.

“Of course it’s relevant! It means we’re dealing with a closet case, not a ‘turn the straight gay with the fabulous powers of combined twinkiness’ case.”

Andrew grinned again. “I’d watch that show,” he said. When Kris stared at him, he shrugged unrepentantly. “Just saying.”

Kris blinked. “Right.”

Brad reached over and petted Kris’s cheek. “Don’t worry, Arkansas, this is _encouraging_.”

—

Kris got back from another afternoon of hanging with Andrew, to find Adam getting ready to go out.

“Kris!” Adam said brightly, totally ignoring Brad’s presence. “You’re just in time.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’re going out,” Adam replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Kris sighed. He leaned in to kiss Brad, then shooed him away, before turning back to check Adam’s reaction.

Adam didn’t look the least bit upset about Kris kissing someone else. Actually, he didn’t look like he’d even been looking.

“I don’t want to go out,” Kris said, trying to cross the room to his bed.

He was intercepted.

“Krissss,” whined Adam, looping his arm around Kris’s neck and tilting his head down to look at him through his lashes. “You have to come. I already told everyone you were coming.”

Kris sighed and tried to pretend he didn’t absolutely _love_ having Adam all warm and Adam-y draped over him like that. “Well, I don’t wan—”

“Besides, it’s karaoke.” Adam grinned. “I _know_ you like karaoke.”

Kris hesitated. “Which one of us is singing?” he asked.

Adam’s grin turned into a smirk. “I am!”

Kris was a weak, weak man.

(Kris was also kind of a masochist.)

“Okay, let me change my shirt,” he conceded.

—

“You’re all frowny,” Brad declared the next morning, when he met Kris and Allison for pancakes and strategy. “What happened?”

“Karaoke,” Kris said darkly. “Adam sang.”

Brad lifted his eyebrows. “Is he bad?”

Kris pouted into his coffee, squirming uncomfortably in his seat. Why did he wear tight jeans, again? “To the _bone_ ,” he muttered.

“No, he isn’t bad,” said Allison. She rubbed Kris’s back consolingly. “He’s really, really good, actually.”

“And that’s a problem…?”

Kris nodded emphatically.

“Kris has… issues,” Allison explained, trying to sound sympathetic even though she obviously wanted to laugh.

Brad got it. “ _Oh_. I see.”

“I hate my life,” Kris groaned.

“I’d be more than happy to have fake-boyfriend real-sex with you,” Brad pointed out helpfully, ignoring Allison’s sudden gigglefit. “As I’ve said before.”

“ _Hate_ ,” said Kris, “my life.”

—

“What’s the matter with you?” Andrew asked when they next showed up at his room, directing his words at Brad — who’d pranced in and plopped himself down to sulk on top of Andrew’s desk.

Brad pouted more. He glared at Kris, who sighed.

Andrew glanced between them. “No, really. What’s the matter with you?”

“Blue balls,” Brad said succinctly. He gestured vaguely at the guitar on the bed next to Andrew. “Play.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows at Brad. Kris groaned, slumping against the wall by the door and staring exasperatedly down at his shoes.

“Explanation?” Andrew asked, amused.

“Allen only lets me get frisky if the straight boy’s around,” Brad complained. “You cute boys making music is the most entertainment I get.”

“You poor thing,” teased Andrew.

“I’m not kidding,” Brad retorted, corners of his mouth turning down. “It’s just kisses and grinding when the roommate might show up, and otherwise, it’s all nothing!”

Andrew reached out and patted Brad’s thigh sympathetically. Kris groaned and thunked his head back against the wall. “Seriously?”

“Man cannot live by frottage alone!” Brad exclaimed indignantly. “He requires orgasms!”

Kris sighed. “Brad, I’m _not_ sleeping with you. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Until you change your mind.” Scooting closer, Brad brought out a wheedling voice and said, “C’mon, just one good fuck, please?”

“No!” Kris shook his head.

“Please? We can do it in your room and plan it so straight boy shows up?”

Kris kept shaking his head, resolutely not looking at Andrew, who was snickering loudly.

Brad pouted. “Not even a blowjob? Just _one_?”

“ _No_!”

“Aw, that’s—”

“I’ll do it,” said Andrew.

Kris stared.

Brad blinked, then cocked his head to the side. “Do what?”

“Give you a blowjob,” Andrew replied promptly. He grinned. “Or you could give me one, if you’d rather. Or both.”

Brad considered it. Briefly. “Okay!” he declared brightly.

“… seriously?” demanded Kris, as Brad bounced up and settled himself on his knees between Andrew’s legs, going immediately for his belt buckle.

Andrew nodded distractedly, his eyes on Brad.

“You can watch,” Brad piped up helpfully, while pulling down the zipper of Andrew’s jeans. He paused to grin at Kris. “We don’t mind.”

“I’m not gonna watch!”

“You’re not leaving,” Andrew pointed out.

“Yes, I am!”

Kris got up and fled. They only bothered to laugh at him for a second or two. Not that he stayed nearby to hear, or anything.

—

What Kris did, of course, was go to Chick-fil-A.

The skinny kid with the pink hair who was manning the front counter recognized him immediately, and while passing him his chicken, told him that Allison wasn’t there that day. She had a test or something she had to study for, apparently.

Kris took his food to his usual booth in the corner. He may have looked like someone kicked his puppy while he ate, but there was no-one who cared around to prove it.

He stopped at Starbucks on the way back to Andrew’s room. He didn’t get any for the other guys.

—

When Kris returned to the room, Andrew was on the floor noodling on his guitar while Brad, lounging on the bed, played with his hair. Brad looked slightly mussed, and Andrew’s clothes were completely disarrayed; the both looked up and grinned when he walked in.

“Was that really necessary?” Kris complained, slumping into Andrew’s desk chair.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t feel the need to get off with me,” Brad replied placidly.

“It’s an experience,” Andrew said helpfully, leaning his head back to smile at Brad, who smiled back.

Kris drank his coffee, scowling at them over the rim of the cup.

He left a half an hour later, Brad tucked against his side for the walk across campus back to Kris’s room, where they would say goodbye in front of Adam, smiling in a very self-satisfied way.

Brad, not Kris. Kris was doing his best not to pout.

There had been no more guitar-playing.

—

Andrew didn’t wear shirts anymore.

In fact, Kris wasn’t _entirely_ sure that all Andrew’s shirts hadn’t been _burned_ , or something.

“Do you have to do that?” he demanded one afternoon, trying not to watch Brad paw at Andrew’s naked chest while Andrew looked really freaking pleased about everything. “Sexually frustrated here, man, and that’s _really_ not helping.”

“I’ve chosen to keep him semi-clothed for my aesthetic enjoyment,” Brad said. He gave Kris a blithe smile. “And I like to touch.”

“Yeah, but is it _necessary_?”

Brad shrugged. He leaned over and put his mouth on Andrew’s shoulder.

“Nobody said you had to wear a shirt, either,” said Andrew, also smiling.

Kris groaned and left.

At least everybody at Starbucks wore _clothes_.

—

Between Brad and Andrew’s apparent ambition to form their own partially-nudist colony, Allison’s incessantly cheerful conviction that the Boyfriend Plan would actually _work_ , and Adam being… _Adam_ , Kris could almost convince himself that going home for spring break was actually going to be a welcome break.

He’d still rather have stayed with Adam, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can also be read [here on LJ](http://gailsauce.livejournal.com/73409.html) or [here on DW](http://gailsauce.dreamwidth.org/72822.html?style=site).


	3. Chapter 3

Kris had been hoping that the time away from Adam would improve the situation. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, but he sort of figured that it had to get at least a _little_ better.

When he got back from spring break, he realized that it hadn’t.

Apparently, at some point over the two weeks Kris had been gone, Adam had decided that _looking_ at Kris was unnecessary. Unless Brad was around, in which case _glaring_ at the pair of them became absolutely _essential_ , or something.

It wasn’t just the glaring that bothered Kris. He’d _also_ been wanting to just _enjoy_ being around Adam, because the school year was going to be over soon, and Kris knew they weren’t going to be roommates when they came back after the summer — Adam was planning on getting himself an apartment, for one thing — and, well, Kris was really going to _miss_ him. Adam, though, seemed to have developed some sort of huge mental block when it came to talking to Kris, because he started zoning out in the middle of conversations about things that used to be able to hold his undivided attention.

Adam started getting vague and noncommittal when Kris said just about anything to him, and he very nearly stopped initiating conversations entirely. He zoned out all the time, he never met Kris’s eye anymore, and he was noticeably more irritable. He spent so much time outside the room that Kris almost felt like Adam was avoiding him, and he looked… constantly unhappy.

Kris wondered, sorta, if maybe he was in trouble for not calling or texting Adam over break. If they were dating, instead of just friends, he would have thought he was in the doghouse.

—

One thing that Kris _did_ know, however, was that suddenly, if he mentioned that he was going to be seeing Brad and Andrew, Adam shut down. He would just completely and totally stop _everything_ , give Kris this really horrible obviously fake smile and tell him to have fun, then ignore him until he left.

So, Allison’s brilliant master plan was _clearly_ a stunning success.

Not.

“It’s over, guys,” Kris said, after the eighth or so time Adam shut him out for saying he was leaving to go jam, not bothering with any kind of greeting as he walked into Andrew’s room.

On the bed, Brad and Andrew looked up at him, clearly surprised by his tone. They were the only ones in the room — Kris was actually starting to seriously doubt the existence of Andrew’s roommate — and, as usual, Andrew didn’t have a shirt on. At least Brad was wearing pants this time.

“What’s over?” asked Andrew.

“This stupid plan,” Kris said, crossing his arms and not looking at them. “It was a bad idea to begin with. And _stupid_.”

From the corner of is eye, Kris saw the other two exchange concerned looks. He decided to ignore those.

“Okay,” Brad said slowly, sitting up. “I told you that before we started. What brought this sudden bout of agreement on?”

Kris shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. But, whatever, it’s over, so you two can, like, make out in public or whatever, if you want.”

“What a stunning display of apathy,” murmured Brad. “Be less convincing, why don’t you.”

Andrew frowned at him, then turned the expression on Kris. “Did something happen, man?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kris said, lifting his head to give them a really pathetic fake smile as he added, “Not like any of us were really enjoying it anyway.”

That just made _both_ of them frown.

Kris wiped the expression off his face and sighed. “Sorry. Look, guys, everything’s fine, I just don’t want to do this anymore, okay?”

“Okay…”

“Besides, you guys shouldn’t have to keep hiding…” Kris paused, trying to find the right word. He gave up after a moment. “… whatever it is you two are to each other.”

Brad and Andrew regarded him closely for another few seconds, then they started grinning.

“Come on,” Brad said, sitting up properly and climbing off the bed. “There’s this really bitchy homophobic girl in one of my classes, and I figured out which building her dorm’s in; let’s go make out in front of it.”

“‘Kay,” agreed Andrew, reaching for a shirt that had been discarded and left to hang off a desk lamp. It looked like Brad’s.

“Oh, don’t bother,” exclaimed Brad, snatching the shirt away and tossing it to the floor somewhere past Kris, at whom he threw a speculative look. “Want to come along? Now that we’re not fake dating, you can totally make out with _both_ of us.”

“No thanks.” Kris gave them a much more successful fake smile. “I’m just going to go back to my room. Do some… homework.”

“Your loss,” said Andrew brightly, as Brad tugged him out of the room.

—

Kris had thought he was doing a good job not showing that he was feeling like the missing eighth dwarf, Mopey, but apparently it wasn’t a good _enough_ job, because Adam took one look at him when he walked back into their dorm room, and started frowning fiercely. Like, even more fiercely than he’d been frowning in the weeks since Kris got back.

Kris considered saying something, but he didn’t have the energy right then for pretending he couldn’t tell that Adam was barely participating in the conversation, so he just dropped into the chair in front of his desk and stared blankly at his closed computer. He didn’t really have the energy to work on anything for school, either, whatever he’d said to Brad.

There was silence in the room for several minutes. Kris almost wished that Adam would start singing again, like he had been before Kris came back. No, it was not creepy that he knew Adam was doing that; he’d heard Adam from the hall. Adam had a good voice, okay? It carried well.

“I’m single,” Adam announced abruptly.

Kris slowly turned to look at him, blinking. “You… What?”

Adam was staring at him intently. “Alisan and I broke up over spring break,” he said, blandly. Like that wasn’t weeks ago and he hadn’t said nothing about it to Kris even though they _lived_ together.

Of course, Adam hadn’t exactly told Kris that he’d _had_ a girlfriend, so that was pretty much par for the talking-about-relationships course.

Well, Kris couldn’t golf, anyway. Stupid analogies.

“Me too,” he said, instead of anything else he could have. He sighed. “Single, I mean. Me and Brad weren’t working. So I— we broke up.”

“Oh.” Surprisingly, Adam started to smile.

Kris hadn’t seen Adam smiling at him in what felt depressingly like centuries, so he firmly told his brain and his heart and all other parts of him that wanted to have an opinion on Adam and his actions lately to just shut _up_ already, and enjoyed that expression on Adam’s face. Whatever the reason it was there, it was still one of Kris’s favorite things to look at.

“Yeah,” Kris muttered lamely.

What? No-one expected him to actually be able to _talk_ while Adam smiled, did they?

Freaking slave-drivers.

“We should go out,” Adam said, sounding almost cheerful. “Celebrate, or something.”

Kris stared at him. “You want us to celebrate being single.”

“It’s that or sit here and molder in our angst.” Adam shrugged. “Between the two of us, I’d rather get out, before I get bad enough to start writing horrible poetry and being disgustingly emo. Wouldn’t you?”

“I guess…” Kris allowed uncertainly.

Somehow, that ended up with him being dragged out to Adam’s favorite bar (which Kris didn’t even know why Adam _had_ , since he was still just as obviously underage as Kris and didn’t usually go out to places that didn’t let him sing, but whatever).

—

Adam parked Kris at a little table in a corner then went and got them some (very illegal) drinks. He knew the bartender or something, which was helpful, because Kris was pretty sure that he looked about sixteen when he blushed so a fake ID would have been useless.

“So, awesome,” Adam said, passing Kris a glass of something brown and vaguely innocent-looking. His own drink was in a martini glass and looked like Kool-aid but probably wasn’t. “Here’s to embracing college cliches and solving our problems with booze!”

“Kay. To, uh, that. I guess.” Kris took a tentative sip of his drink.

Adam watched him with — well, Kris didn’t actually know what to call that look. Gleamy-eyed.

“Like it?”

“It’s okay.” Kris shrugged. “What is it?”

“Long Island Iced Tea,” replied Adam, grinning.

Oh. Well, if it was tea, that was fine, right? “Kay.”

Adam’s grin was suddenly showing a lot more teeth. Kris squirmed.

“Drink your tea,” Adam said, sipping his own brightly colored beverage.

Kris did, squirming more, because Adam was still _watching_ him, like he was waiting for something.

Or was after something.

A moment later, Adam asked, far too casually, “So, what happened?”

Kris didn’t follow. “Uh. What?”

“With you and—” Adam paused, his face doing a weird contorting thing that Kris found slightly dizzying. “— and _Brad_.”

“It— Nothing.”

“Really? _Nothing_?” Adam did not look impressed.

Kris nodded. He really hoped he didn’t look as evasive as he felt, because he definitely did not want to get pushed into telling Adam all about Kris’s stupid and clearly futile attempt at making Adam jealous.

“What, um,” he blurted, then paused to clear his throat. “What happened with yours? Why’d you break up, I mean?”

“Why’d Alisan and I break up?” Adam repeated, a line appearing between his eyebrows as he frowned, like he was considering what to say.

Kris nodded again, trying to look encouraging.

After another moment’s thought, Adam said flatly, “It was because she decided I was gay.”

Kris swallowed thickly and didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust himself not to start thanking God, if he opened his mouth.

Adam did something with his shoulders that was too tight to be a shrug, but looked like it was meant as one. “I… think she was probably right,” he muttered.

“ _What_?”

Adam met his eyes firmly. “I’m gay.”

Kris lost his breath. He had no idea where it went, and he didn’t even care.

“Oh,” he said. “So— _oh_.”

Adam was watching him carefully. “Yeah.”

Kris held onto his glass tightly, and very carefully did _not_ throw himself across the table into Adam’s lap. “Well. Uh. Congratulations?”

“You’re not going to say ‘I told you so’?” Adam asked, voice neutral.

“Oh, heck, no!” Kris shook his head quickly. “Man, I’m leaving that to Danielle. I’m pretty sure she’s got, like, some whole epic _speech_. There are probably cue cards. And, like, pre-written audience participation.”

The corner of Adam’s mouth curled up in one of his little almost-smiles.

Kris wanted to lick it. He was having trouble remembering that there were still reasons he probably shouldn’t. He took a big gulp of his tea, instead.

“Let’s not talk about my impending humiliation at Dani’s hands, okay?” Adam asked, playing up a wince dramatically.

Man, Kris was glad the tiny smirk was gone. He shrugged. “What do you want to talk about?”

“How about the pretty boy you just broke up with?”

“Brad?” Kris’s eyes widened, an unpleasant swooping thing happening to his stomach. “You can’t really want to talk about _Brad_.”

“Oh, but I do,” said Adam. He smiled flatly, the way he did when he was thinking things he wasn’t saying, then leaned forward, all eager and intent. “Tell me about Brad.”

Kris stared. “You just came out to me, and you want to talk about my, uh, ex-boyfriend?”

“That’s exactly what I went to talk about.”

… right. So. Maybe the plan hadn’t been futile, and Kris had succeeded in making Adam jealous — only, of _him_ , not Brad.

Kris’s luck fucking _sucked_.

He took a fortifying drink — and another, because somehow the first left his throat dry.

Then, in a dull voice, he began listing all of Brad’s more interesting qualities, feeling like his brain was fuzzing out and going to sit, tight and anxious, somewhere in his chest.

Adam just sat there, his face carefully, blatantly blank.

—

“Kris?” someone asked, hours later, nudging Kris’s shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Mama would whoop my ass if she saw me last night,” groaned Kris, rolling over onto his belly before realizing that, hey, he was on his room _floor_. He did not remember the floor. He didn’t remember getting back to the dorm — and, actually, he didn’t remember much of the night after deducing that Adam was interested in _Brad_. That was… weird. “Uh, Adam?”

“Yeah?”

Kris squinted sideways into the excessively bright light coming through the cracked bathroom door. “Ugh, yelling, stop.”

Adam snickered. But he did it quietly so Kris would worry about being offended later.

“Why the floor?” Kris asked. Coherently, and everything.

Adam snickered again. “Apparently, there is no bed.”

“Ugh.” Kris squeezed his eyes closed again. “Either leave me to die in peace or take me to bed.”

“Uh.” Adam coughed. “Right,” he said, and picked Kris up.

Kris went back to sleep.

He was never trusting any tea Adam gave him ever again.

—

The next time Kris woke up, Adam brought him two aspirin and a huge glass of water, and sat down on the edge of Kris’s bed to watch him drink it.

“So, are you really gay?” Kris asked, between cautious sips, fidgeting. “Or did my drunken imagination come up with that in trade for the bed?”

Adam stilled, giving Kris a very careful look. “No, you didn’t imagine that. I’m gay. I’m… way gay.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Also, you were totally planning on reveling in my awkwardness when I tell Dani that,” Adam added. He laughed, and it sounded odd.

Yeah, that was starting to come back to Kris.

So was the rest of the night before.

 _Brad_.

“That’ll be fun,” he said, half-choked, and held out the mostly-empty water glass. “Here, ‘m done. Uh. Thanks.”

For a second, Adam looked slightly guilty. Then he grinned. “You’re welcome, of course, babe.”

Kris grunted acknowledgement, feeling slightly sick in a way that had nothing to do with his hangover.

After a few beats of silence, Adam cleared his throat.

“So, when was the last time you actually talked to Brad?”

Kris groaned. He rolled over to face the wall and pretended that Adam wasn’t there anymore.

—

After that, Adam seemed to get that Kris didn’t want to talk about Brad, and stopped asking about him — though Kris had the incredibly paranoid feeling that Adam was just laying in wait for Kris to slip up and mention his ‘ex’ on his own. He felt like he was living with a jack-in-the-box, and every time Adam would cut himself off and give Kris this _look_ instead, the little crank turned again.

One afternoon, after no less than three of those crank-turning moments in as many hours, Kris met Allison at Chick-fil-A to walk her home since she hadn’t seen him in several days. He seriously thought he was doing a pretty good job pretending that he didn’t feel like he was about to crawl out of his skin.

Apparently, not so much.

In the parking lot, when Kris would have started walking down the street, Allison’s hand on his arm stopped him. “Seriously, Kris,” she said quietly, with a little worried line between her eyes, “are you okay?”

He wasn’t going to tell her.

Her frown got deeper. “Kristopher. What’s wrong?”

No, really, he _wouldn’t_.

She bit her lip.

“Adam is single,” Kris blurted. “And admitting that he’s gay.”

Allison blinked. “But— that’s good! Why do you look all unhappy? Isn’t that good?”

“He _still_ doesn’t want me.” He felt his shoulders hunching in protectively, and didn’t bother to stop them.

“How do you know that?” she demanded, squeezing his arm and offering a hopeful smile. “He could totally want you, you should—”

“He wants _Brad_ ,” Kris spat. His eyes prickled, and he _did_ try to stop that, but they started welling up anyway. “He kept asking about him and now he’s obsessed or something, I can practically _feel_ him thinking about Brad every time he trails off and— and he’s _totally obvious_ , Alli, God. He fucking wants Brad, not _me_.”

“Oh,” whispered Allison, after a few seconds. She looked as devastated as Kris felt. “Are you… sure?”

Tears started to leak down his cheeks. He brushed them off angrily — he was _not_ going to cry, he didn’t cry, he was the _one person_ in his family who wasn’t a crier, fuck he _wouldn’t cry_ — but they kept coming. “Yeah,” he muttered, his throat tight and his chest burning. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Oh, _sweetie_ , I am _so_ sorry,” Allison said sadly, moving closer and wrapping an arm around him. “So, so sorry, Kris, honey.” She sounded like she was fighting off tears, too.

Before Kris had time to fight it, something about that just _broke_ him. The next thing he knew, he was pitching forward into Allison’s arms, clinging to her and sobbing in great, shuddering heaves, his eyes screwed up tightly even though it did nothing to stop the flow of tears. There was a hopeless knot in his belly and a sick, horrified weight on his shoulders, and he _couldn’t stop_ , didn’t feel like he’d ever be able to stop, he’d been holding himself back for so long, and—

“ _Hey_! What the _hell_?”

That was Adam’s voice.

Allison jerked, and suddenly, there was a familiar large body at Kris’s back, bleeding warmth all over him.

“Fuck,” Adam swore. He got his fingers around Kris’s arm and tugged him away from Allison, wrapping around him with his other hand on the back of Kris’s neck, urging him against Adam’s shoulder. “Fuck, Alli, what’d you do to him?”

Kris let himself rest there, hiccupping and sniffling and trying not to keep sobbing pathetically, even though it was _Adam_. Mostly _because_ it was Adam. He didn’t want Adam to see him like that, _Christ_ it was embarrassing, but Adam was so _comforting_. Kris squeezed his eyes closed and turned his face toward Adam’s neck.

Allison sounded offended when she exclaimed, “ _I_ didn’t do anything! Jesus, Adam.”

“He’s in fucking tears in the fucking Chick-fil-A parking lot.” The hand Adam’d had on Kris’s arm moved to his back, automatically rubbing in gentle circles, even as Adam demanded meanly, “What, did you run out of chicken?”

“Stop,” Kris mumbled, shaking his head. “Adam, she didn’t—”

“Of _course_ I didn’t,” said Allison. Kris heard her huff, and then her small hand was on his back next to Adam’s.

“Oh. Right.” Adam cleared his throat. “Sorry, baby girl.”

Allison huffed again.

“So, what—” Adam started to ask.

Kris pulled way sharply, already opening his mouth to say— he didn’t know what. Something like Adam shouldn’t worry about it, it was nothing.

Allison was faster.

“Dude,” she said, incredulous, “he’s, got, like, major unrequited love going on. Have you seriously not noticed? _Dude_!”

Adam’s hands hadn’t left Kris, and he was pressed all up against Kris’s side, so Kris literally felt him go stiff and still.

“ _What_?”

“Oh my god, you are officially the worst best friend ever!” Allison accused, smacking Adam’s shoulder. “He has been pining for, like, _forever_!”

Adam pushed Kris away, hands on his shoulders, to stare at him intently. “Kris, is that— Are you really in _love_?”

Kris wanted to kick him in the shins. Instead, he shook Adam’s hands off, feeling shaky and unbalanced and hollow inside, and whispered, “Yes. Fuck you very much for caring _now_.”

Adam looked stricken. “ _Kris_ , I—”

Kris dismissed the words with a jerk of his head. “No. Just…” He tried to take a deep breath, but it didn’t really work. “You know what? I’m gonna walk away now.”

He hadn’t even gone two steps before he heard someone move to follow him.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he shot over his shoulder.

The sound of Adam moving stopped.

Kris started to run.

—

Kris hid in the county library across town for hours, ignoring his phone, until he felt calmer and less likely to lose it again like a teenage girl with her first crush.

God, and he said _Adam_ was melodramatic.

—

Kris spent the rest of term pretending as hard as he could that getting the highest grade he could in every one of his classes was deeply, terribly important to him. He figured he was probably doing a really unconvincing job, but he hoped the pretext would keep Adam from trying to talk to him about anything deeper than “I don’t feel like Chinese tonight, how about cheeseburgers?” Asking whether they should watch _Jarhead_ or _Rendition_ didn’t leave a lot of room for in-depth discussions of their love lives, after all.

What was more surprising than Kris’s attempt, Adam actually let him get away with it.

—

Finals were over. Kris had passed all his classes, and his friends were suitably shocked. Even better, that whole awkward unrequited love thing hadn’t been brought up in ages.

Kris celebrated surviving all his classes by watching a movie, but halfway through watching four teenage West Virginia boys set off many rockets with varied and questionable results, he realized that Adam — who had also finished with his classes — was sitting across the room, staring at him intently.

Adam had been staring at him a lot in the past couple of weeks, but for some reason this time felt more focused. Like Adam had actual _intent_ this time.

After ten minutes, during which Kris was sure Adam didn’t look away even once and Kris himself failed massively at actually paying attention to his movie, Kris couldn’t stand it anymore. There was no way he wanted to confront Adam about the staring, though, so he closed his laptop and tried to make a break for it.

Adam was on his feet a moment after him.

“Hey, Kris! Kris— Look,” he blurted, sliding between Kris and the door and leaning back against it so that Kris was, effectively, trapped in the dorm with him. “I know you don’t want to talk to me—”

Kris blinked. “What?”

“— but I’m really— Kris, you’ve been a mess lately, and I really don’t like it.”

Kris swallowed, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see the tense, uncomfortable look on Adam’s face. “I’m sorry,” he replied stiffly. “You won’t have to put up with it much longer.”

“I won’t?”

Adam sounded freaking _hopeful_. Shit.

That probably shouldn’t’ve hurt as much as it did.

“Of course not.” Kris clenched his hands into fists, which he hid behind his back. “We’re both leaving soon, and when you start next semester you’ll have a place of your own and you won’t have to—”

“Honey, _no_ ,” Adam interrupted, his voice so fierce and furious that Kris had to open his eyes; Adam was staring at him, horrified and hurt. “That wasn’t— I don’t want that.”

After gaping at him blankly for a moment, Kris deflated. “Oh.”

“I just…” Adam trailed off and cleared his throat. He took a step closer.

Kris backed away. Adam kept coming, until Kris was standing backed against one of their desks with Adam’s hand cradling the side of his neck.

“Do I need to break Bell’s arms?” Adam inquired softly. His thumb was gently sweeping over the point of Kris’s pulse, back and forth and back, distracting him. “His legs? His nose?”

“You— What?”

“I’ll beat him up for you,” Adam vowed solemnly, tipping forward so their foreheads pressed together, his fingers under Kris’s jaw tilting his face up to meet him. “Whatever you want, Kris, I can do it. Alli’ll help me hide the body.”

“Why would you do that?” Kris bleated, his eyelids fluttering so he couldn’t really see Adam, even if he hadn’t been so close. His heart was pounding so hard he was surprised Adam couldn’t feel it. “Why would you offer to beat him up? You’re in _love_ with him.”

Adam’s hand stilled; a moment later, his grip on Kris tightened. “What the hell, Kristopher? I’m not in love with _Bell_ , I’m in love with _you_. And you’re in love with him, and he _hurt_ you. Of course I’d—”

“N-No,” stuttered Kris, shaking his head shallowly, slow enough that he didn’t dislodge Adam’s hand. “I’m— Actually, Adam, I’m in love with _you_. Brad didn’t, we weren’t even really _dating_ , it was just a _cover_ , I never even —” Suddenly, Adam’s words, all of them, actually made it into Kris’s stupid slow brain, and his eyes flew open. He shoved Adam hard in the chest, even though it only pushed Adam a few inches away. “ _What_ did you just say to me!? You _what_?”

“Oh, thank _fuck_.” Adam was beaming at him, suddenly. “Do you really love me?”

Kris just stared at him.

“God, your stupid face,” groaned Adam, not sounding like he thought it was stupid at all.

Then he was kissing Kris.

—

Kris didn’t know how long they stayed there, Adam pressing all up against him, his hand on Kris’s neck holding Kris’s head still for one slow, thorough kiss after another. At some point, Kris had wiggled his way up onto the desk, so he was sitting with Adam leaning between his thighs, pelvis to pelvis and Adam’s awesome porn star cock making friends with Kris’s through their jeans every time Adam gave a languid little thrust of his hips — God, that was nice.

“You’re an idiot,” Adam said eventually, pulling back and urging Kris forward to rest his head on Adam’s shoulder.

“So are you,” Kris mumbled into Adam’s neck, hugging tighter with the arms around Adam’s waist.

Adam laughed, dropping a kiss on Kris’s hair, just behind his ear, where he could reach without dislodging Kris. “So, you know that apartment off campus that I was gonna get when I come back next term?”

Kris’s breath kind of stalled for a moment. “Yeah?” he croaked.

“You should totally come live there with me,” declared Adam. He dropped another kiss on Kris’s head, his fingers flexing on the back of Kris’s neck. “As my boyfriend.”

After a second, Kris snuggled closer, saying, “That’s kind of gay.”

“Yeah, well, so are we,” Adam said. He tugged Kris away to look at him. “So, will you?”

“Of course, man,” Kris replied, unable to stop grinning.

Adam smiled brilliantly back at him, and started stealing Kris’s mind again with those amazing, fantastic, perfect kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can also be read [here on LJ](http://gailsauce.livejournal.com/73536.html) or [here on DW](http://gailsauce.dreamwidth.org/73010.html?style=site).

**Author's Note:**

> This work can also be read [here on LJ](http://gailsauce.livejournal.com/73864.html) or here on DW. (Links go to masterposts—individual first chapters can be found [here on LJ](http://gailsauce.livejournal.com/73064.html) and [here on DW](http://gailsauce.dreamwidth.org/72529.html?style=site).)


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